Porto-based Sword Health, a HealthTech AI Care firm, at the moment introduced a €34.6 million funding spherical at a €3.4 billion valuation to speed up their M&A momentum, world enlargement, and the event of foundational AI fashions.
The spherical was led by Common Catalyst and included participation from Khosla Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Lince Capital, Oxy Capital, Armilar, Indico Capital, and Shilling.
“We’ve rebuilt care supply from the bottom up – changing a century-old, labor-intensive mannequin with AI that removes limitations to world-class care for everybody who wants it,” mentioned Virgilio Bento, Founder & CEO of Sword Well being. “Treating greater than half 1,000,000 individuals and saving purchasers almost a billion {dollars} in pointless healthcare prices has confirmed that Sword’s pioneering AI Care Mannequin is the way forward for healthcare.
“This funding is a milestone that permits us to deepen our foundational AI analysis and to speed up our enlargement into new healthcare verticals like psychological well being – a area nonetheless dominated by unscalable and ineffective fashions – bringing actually life-changing care to tens of millions who wrestle with psychological well being world wide, the identical manner we did it for tens of millions with bodily ache.”
Based in 2015, Sword Well being seems to be to shift healthcare from human-first to AI-first by means of its AI care platform, making world-class healthcare out there anytime, wherever, whereas considerably decreasing prices for payers, self-insured employers, nationwide well being methods, and different healthcare organisations.
Sword started by specializing in bodily ache care with AI at its core, and has since expanded into pelvic well being, motion well being, and now psychological well being. Since 2020, greater than 500,000 members throughout three continents have accomplished 6.5 million AI classes, reportedly serving to Sword’s 1,000+ enterprise purchasers keep away from almost €865 million in pointless healthcare prices.
Backed by 40 medical research and over 40 patents, Sword Well being has raised greater than €259 million from traders, together with Khosla Ventures, Common Catalyst, Transformation Capital and Founders Fund.
“At Common Catalyst, we again corporations driving significant change in healthcare, and we imagine Sword Well being sits squarely on the forefront of that transformation,” mentioned Chris Bischoff, Managing Director at Common Catalyst and Sword board director. “By fusing subtle AI with human medical experience, Sword is re-imagining your entire care continuum – from bodily ache care to at the moment’s launch of Thoughts for psychological well being – increasing entry, bettering outcomes, and decreasing prices at a worldwide scale. We’re proud to assist Sword because it accelerates the shift towards actually AI-first healthcare.”
Together with the funding announcement, the corporate additionally unveiled Thoughts, a psychological well being answer that mixes AI and licensed clinicians to ship steady, personalised care, trying to remodeling psychological well being from episodic speak remedy to a proactive, always-on assist system.
With the launch of Thoughts, Sword is increasing its AI Care mannequin to sort out one in every of healthcare’s greatest challenges: entry to efficient and high-quality psychological well being care.
In response to information offered by Sword, almost 1 billion individuals worldwide stay with a psychological well being situation. But care stays fragmented, reactive, and inaccessible. Within the U.S. alone, greater than 60 million adults skilled psychological sickness final yr, however most by no means obtained significant care. Regardless of broad availability of psychological well being options, entry stays difficult, utilisation stays low, and outcomes aren’t bettering.
Sword believes that conventional remedy, based mostly on episodic 40-minute classes typically weeks aside, can’t sustain with the round the clock actuality of psychological well being, and displays a largely outdated, superficial and one-dimensional view. It captures solely fragments of an individual’s life, lacking the on a regular basis elements that form psychological wellbeing: sleep, stress, relationships, setting.
Thoughts seems to be to sort out this with a proactive, 24/7 mannequin that integrates cutting-edge AI with licensed, Ph.D-level psychological well being specialists.
Three improvements energy Thoughts:
- Phoenix: A personalised AI Care agent particularly designed to handle psychological well being circumstances in a complete, tailor-made, and holistic manner.
- M-band: A proprietary wearable system that captures the affected person’s full environmental and physiological context, detecting early indicators of despair and nervousness to allow proactive outreach by Thoughts clinicians.
- Thoughts clinicians: Ph.D.-level psychological well being professionals work in live performance with Phoenix to constantly interact with sufferers every day, making certain the human contact stays central to care.
